


Guessing Games

by devilinthedetails



Series: The Ties that Bind [3]
Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Family, Gen, Guessing Games, Honor, Knight & Squire, References to Abuse, Trust, references to alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-11-18
Packaged: 2019-02-04 02:49:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12761544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Lord Wyldon and Lord Imrah play a guessing game regarding whom Imrah will pick as his squire.





	Guessing Games

Guessing Game

“Lord Imrah, it’s an honor to dine with you.” Lord Wyldon greeted Imrah with a nod as they seated themselves at the table on top of the dais in the dining hall where the pages and squires at the palace ate their meals. The page who was waiting on Lord Wyldon that evening, a crimson-cheeked boy who couldn’t have been older than twelve, hurried forward to fill their goblets with wine, his hands trembling so much that Imrah feared he might spill. 

Thankfully he didn’t and retreated hastily from their table as Imrah replied, “The honor is all mine, Lord Wyldon. How is Lady Vivienne?” 

“Busy nursing our new litter of elkhounds,” answered Lord Wyldon as the returning page set steaming platters of pork loin with apples dusted in cinnamon in front of them and then stepped back from the table again. “How is Lady Marielle?” 

“Amused and frustrated by turns over the antics of our dear daughters.” Imrah smiled slightly as he carved up his pork. “I never thought I’d say this but raising my two sons was easier than bringing up my daughters.” 

“Speaking of your sons, how is Sir Emeric?” Lord Wyldon asked between bites of pork and apple. “I heard he was stationed on the Gallan border. How does he find the situation there?” 

“He writes of minor skirmishes but no significant conflicts.” Warming to his topic since he was always glad of an opportunity to discuss military matters with someone as knowledgeable as Lord Wyldon, Imrah sipped at his drink. “He says the fighting they encounter on patrols is routine but the area is hardly a war zone. The patrols are necessary as ever but there is no sign of impending warfare.” 

“I hear the same reports from the knights who have come back from the Gallan border to pick a squire.” Lord Wyldon was silent for a moment before abruptly shifting the subject, his dark eyes hard with challenge. “Let me guess who you’ll choose for your next squire.” 

“Not your ridiculous guessing game again.” Torn between amusement and irritation, Imrah resisted the urge to snort like a horse. 

“Allow me my fun, Lord Imrah.” Lord Wyldon’s lips thinned to a knife’s edge. “Guessing which knights will select which squires is one of the few entertainments this job offers.” 

“You must do the guessing game just for laughs and not to win.” Imrah chuckled at the memory of Lord Wyldon’s failed guesses when he had taken the Pearlsmouth lad as his squire. “That’s why you couldn’t guess my squire right last time.” 

“I always play to win.” Lord Wyldon’s jaw clenched as if he didn’t appreciate any joke at his expense. “It’s just that I make my guesses based on who I think would fit together, and the Pearlsmouth boy didn’t seem a good fit for you or anyone else for that matter.” 

“He’s not a bad lad, just a spirited one who needed a bit of a firm hand to reign him in.” Imrah defended his former squire before arching an eyebrow. “Who is a good fit for me this time in your studied opinion?” 

“Prince Roald of Conte.” Lord Wyldon’s tone was quietly triumphant as he gazed into Imrah’s face, obviously intent on detecting every flicker of emotion, and Imrah had to fight the urge to drop his jaw because he had believed that his conversation with the king had managed to do the impossible by palace standards by remaining confidential. 

“How did you know?” Imrah’s forehead furrowed, as he wondered how much gossip about him and Prince Roald was circulating the court currently. 

“I didn’t.” Lord Wyldon’s mouth was twisted into the hint of a smirk. “You just confirmed it for me, though. I’m not blind, Lord Imrah, despite what some foolish pages might believe on the contrary. I saw you watching the prince not as if you were evaluating him as future king like everyone else but as if you were considering him as your squire, and I know the king has taken an interest in Zahir ibn Alhaz. I can put two and two together to equal four.” 

“What do you think of the idea?” Imrah did respect Lord Wyldon’s insights even if he was convinced that Lord Wyldon was sometimes too harsh a taskmaster on a bunch of boys who were not truly warriors yet. 

“What I think doesn’t make a difference.” Lord Wyldon shrugged. “It is the knightmaster who chooses the squire and the squire who accepts. The training master has no role to play in that drama, thank Mithros.” 

“It’s not traditional for the Crown Prince to squire for anyone except the king.” Imrah could imagine that King Jonathan violating the custom would get the hose of some of the realm’s more conservative nobles into a knot and would be another item to add to their long list of ways that their king shattered the traditions that they clung to more fiercely than anything else. 

“It was customary at one point for the Crown Prince to have a knightmaster who wasn’t the king.” Lord Wyldon’s cold eyes flicked over to Prince Roald, who was laughing at some joke—which apparently required animated arm movements—a lanky redhead (whom Imrah suspected was the class clown as there was one in every year) sitting beside him was telling. It was something of a relief for Imrah to see the Crown Prince, who had been so serious and focused in the practice courts, be amused by a wisecracking friend. Perhaps the heir to the throne possessed a well-concealed but wicked sense of humor. If so, Imrah looked forward to drawing it out of him. “Before the Prince in the Tower.” 

Fork midway between his mouth and his plate, Imrah froze. The Prince in the Tower, who had lived and died almost two hundred years ago during the civil wars where the crown had changed hands dozens of times and the realm had been ravaged, had liked to laugh before all breath and all laughter was stifled from him by his own knightmaster. The history books that had forgotten the Prince in the Tower’s true name insisted that he had been charming as so many Contes before and after him were. 

Imrah, whose own knightmaster had broken his bones and bruised his skin for invented offenses whenever he’d drunk too much because it was a vicious and inescapable cycle where the drink made his knightmaster paranoid and belligerent but his paranoia and belligerence in turn drove him to the refuge and destruction of the bottle, had always sympathized with the Prince in the Tower as someone who had been cursed with an even worse knightmaster than Imrah had. 

The Prince in the Tower had been taken hostage by his knightmaster, a man he would’ve trusted as Imrah had believed in his knightmaster before his knightmaster had blackened his eyes and then apologized and healed him (so nobody could see the tell-tale marks of abuse) while still hungover and smelling like a distillery. Then it was said—though nobody was quite certain how the Prince in the Tower had met his untimely end—the Prince in the Tower had been strangled in his bed by his knightmaster. Imrah had always wondered how the Prince in the Tower must have felt trapped in that terrible moment. Had he been in denial that this nightmare was happening to him as Imrah had been so many times when his knightmaster’s iron fists had slammed into his nose or ears? Had he hated the man who was killing him or had he just wished helplessly that his knightmaster was a better man the way Imrah had when his knightmaster had broken his ribs? 

Imrah couldn’t know the answers to any of these questions because history was always silent on the most important and humanizing details. All he knew was that none of his squires had ever felt—or would ever fell—the back of his hand raised against them since he had sworn to himself long ago when his knightmaster had thrashed him that he would be a good knightmaster to his own squires imply by doing the opposite of whatever his knightmaster had done to him. His knightmaster had been a brilliant strategist and a daring warrior but that hadn’t made him a good knightmaster no matter what the rest of the realm had thought on the contrary. Imrah would’ve traded a less decorated knightmaster for a kinder one who would’ve left fewer scars on him in a heartbeat. 

“I’d never hurt a squire.” Imrah didn’t speak until he was confident that his voice would be level. Lord Wyldon wasn’t the sort of man he was inclined to demonstrate any perceived weakness—even if an aversion to mistreating those in his care should have been a strength—before. “Prince or not.” 

“That’s why the king entrusted the heir to the throne to your guidance.” Lord Wyldon was brisk as a winter wind off the Emerald Ocean. “That, your experience as a commander, and the importance of Legann to the country.” 

“I will do my duty by the king and the prince.” Imrah’s eyes drifted over to study Prince Roald, now engaged in a discussion with the a Bazhir across the table from him, again. In the practice courts, the heir to the throne had been adept at every combat skill but exceptionally talented at none and had seemed to get along with all of of his year mates while not being the center of attention. He appeared to be perfectly balanced, avoiding extremes and any opportunity to offend anyone. 

“Prince Roald will do his duty by you.” For Lord Wyldon, such a remark constituted almost effusive praise as the training master, in Imrah’s experience, rarely expressed satisfaction with his pupils. “He takes his obligations with the utmost seriousness as befits his rank, he will obey you as he did me I don’t doubt, and he doesn’t have the mouth of that boy from Pearlsmouth you were stuck with for four years. You might even enjoy some peace and quiet.” 

“Not if my daughters have anything to say about that,” observed Imrah dryly because Mathilde and Julienne were in a stage of near constant squabbling with one another, but that was a state of affairs that Imrah for the most part accepted. After all, he had never wanted to be lord of a castle where everyone tiptoed around for fear of upsetting him. Instead he had dreamed of creating a lively home where everybody felt loved despite the occasional quarrel. Family mattered more to him than peace and quiet, and he had always regarded his squires as family though maybe that was presumptuous if the squire in question happened to be of royal blood. Glancing over at Prince Roald again, Imrah contemplated whether he would ever be able to see the Crown Prince as family and decided it was a guessing game as ridiculous as the one Lord Wyldon had played earlier since the answer was entirely up in the air like dice.


End file.
